U.S. will have little sway over selection of next Pope

There are two things Americans seem not to understand. One is soccer — or football, as the rest of the world knows it — and the other is picking a Pope.

During a radio interview shortly after Pope Benedict XVI announced his resignation, effective Feb. 28, former ambassador to the Vatican Ray Flynn tried to explain some of the thinking that would go into picking the next leader of the Catholic Church.

At the core of his message was a vision of the church looking to make inroads with the faithful in religiously undeveloped and underdeveloped countries — all of which are beyond the bounds of the United States.

While Flynn conceded that the United States might have a cardinal or two well qualified for the office, the subtext of his comments clearly indicated March’s papal conclave for the College of Cardinals will most likely look to someone well-suited to lead the church’s foray into South America, Africa and the like — that someone not being from the United States, and therefore not someone inclined to pick up where Vatican II left off, but rather be more in the line of Benedict’s conservative approach.

As soon as Flynn finished up his interview, callers began speculating that a new Pope might allow priests to marry or nuns to be priests or would Americanize the church in other ways.

At the heart of all these suggestions is a belief that the United States is the center of the Catholic universe, much as Earth was believed to be center of the galactic universe at the time Galileo was accused of heresy.

On Planet Earth, there are estimated to be 1.1 billion Catholics. Of those, only 68 million are in the United States, with a high percentage of disaffected. All this hardly gives the U.S. much clout in electing the next Pope, let alone Americanizing the church.

On a lighter note is soccer. We Americans consider our native-bred endeavors to be the center of the sports universe. We worship at the feet of gridiron greats like the Patriots’ Tom Brady and the Ravens’ Joe Flacco. We brag of the television ratings earned by our Super Bowl extravaganzas — 108.4 million viewers for the Ravens’ recent win over the San Francisco 49ers.

Then there is the properly named sport of football (the one using the round ball and no hands, except for the goalie). Estimates vary widely, but viewership approaches 1.3 billion for the World Cup finals.

Regardless of the exact number, the fact that soccer outdistances American football is easy to understand, given that nearly every country in the world with a television is believed to tune into soccer at one time or the other — and play the game.

Of course, soccer has little to do with who will be the next Pope of a worldwide Catholic population. But it should be a bit humbling to know that the future of neither Catholicism nor soccer is going to be much swayed by what goes on in these 50 United States of America. It is also a thought worth remembering the next time a president and Congress — Democrat or Republican — think they can solve the world’s problems while looking through the narrow prism of American eyes.